MY FAVORITE SINGLES OF 2006

More Cars More Hos More Clothes More Blow


1. Hustlin' -- Rick Ross
2. The Zookeeper's Boy -- Mew
3. What You Know -- T.I.
4. Stuntin' Like My Daddy -- Birdman and Lil' Wayne
5. Van Helsing Boombox -- Man Man
6. Throw Some Ds -- Rich Boy
7. The Funeral -- Band of Horses
8. Promiscuous -- Nelly Furtado and Timbaland
9. Incinerate -- Sonic Youth
10. That's Life -- Killer Mike
11. Promise -- Ciara
12. Where Da Cash At -- Currency, Lil' Wayne and Remy Ma
13. Wamp Wamp (What It Do) -- Clipse
14. Get Up -- Ciara and Chamillionaire
15. Temperature -- Sean Paul
16. Rough Gem -- Islands
17. Comin' Home Atlanta -- Killer Mike
18. Vans -- The Pack
19. No Hay Igual -- Nelly Furtado
20. My Love -- Justin Timberlake and T.I.
21 Mas Maiz -- Big Mato, Nore, Fat Joe, Pitbull, Chingo Bling, Nina Sky, Negra and Lumidee
22. Young Folks -- Peter Bjorn and John
23. I'm N Luv (Wit a Stripper) -- T-Pain and Mike Jones
24. We're from Barcelona -- I'm from Barcelona
25. Irreplaceable -- Beyonce
26. Black Sweat -- Prince
27. Give It to Me -- Timbaland, Nelly Furtado and Justin Timberlake
28. Postcards from Italy -- Beirut
29. In the Morning -- Junior Boys and Andi Tomi
30. Maneater (Remix) -- Nelly Furtado and Lil' Wayne
31. Stars are Blind -- Paris Hilton
32. SexyBack -- Justin Timberlake
33. Push It -- Rick Ross
34. I Luv It -- Young Jeezy
35. Trill -- Clipse
36. Mac 10 Handle -- Prodigy
37. Chips Ahoy! -- The Hold Steady
38. Destiny Calling -- Melody Club
39. A Pillar of Salt -- The Thermals
40. We Share Our Mother's Health -- The Knife
41. Running the World -- Jarvis Cocker
42. I Gotcha -- Lupe Fiasco
43. Mr. Me Too -- Clipse
44. Ghetto Story/Ghetto Story (Remix) -- Baby Cham and Akon
45. I'll Be by Your Side -- Sally Shapiro
46. LDN -- Lily Allen
47. Give It Up to Me -- Sean Paul and Keisha Cole
48. Holla at Me Baby -- DJ Khaled, Paul Wall, Lil' Wayne, Rick Ross, Fat Joe and Pitbull
49. Blow -- Amerie
50. One Blood -- The Game

GHOSTFACE: WHAT'S REALLY GOOD?

Fishscale: no one could get illa.

There's been a ton of blogging about Ghosface in the past few weeks and rightfully so. His new album, Fishscale (see above picture), drops on 3/28. After The Pretty Toney Album and subsequent mixtape fire, there's every reason to think that Fishscale will be a classic, album of the year type joint. Only, I haven't listened to it yet because I want to have it in my hands--no listening restrictions--and give it my full attention on the first spin. So this post isn't about Fishscale, per se, but rather about the recent spate of Ghostface pieces, in particular Sasha Frere-Jones's profile in The New Yorker last week.

I should point out a couple of things first. I think Sasha Frere-Jones is an excellent writer with a ridiculously extensive knowledge of pop music and a lot to say about it. I read his blog regularly. The New Yorker is the only magazine I subscribe to--has been for years--and I read every piece of music criticism in the magazine. Hiring Frere-Jones was an obvious coup, because The New Yorker's pop music criticism had been commonly M.I.A. in the past and, at best, told you about artists you could hear in Starbucks. SFJ has a keen post-modern take on music that is refreshing in a magazine that can often seem stodgy. But...

But... could there be a safer pick from the alternative press? As far as I can remember, SFJ has never pushed any particular artist or movement. While he will often put his subjects in a racial context, he treats race as a matter of fact and stays focused on the music. Maybe this is a good thing, maybe not. But now that my favorite magazine has a real critic at last, I want it to be someone who can push my musical tastes. Tom Breihan, for example. Because otherwise we get pieces like last week's profile of Ghostface (I told you we'd get there eventually).

I actually have no problem with any part of the article outside of the opening and closing paragraphs. In between, Frere-Jones's does a good job of explicating Ghosface's dense verses and unearthing the crazy humanity in the man's seemingly scatter-shot approach. In the paragraphs that book-end this criticism, Frere-Jones reveals himself to be playing to the crowd. He opens:

I own only one piece of art depicting a musician. It's a
photograph of an m.c. known as Ghostface Killah. He is smoking a cigarette and
singing into an old-fashioned ribbon microphone. In his knit cap and sunglasses,
he looks a bit like Frank Sinatra crossed with a jewel thief.

If the reader had any trepidation about reading an article about a rapper, SFJ immediately let's her know that Tony Starks is one of his favorite musicians, in fact, the only one whose likeness SFJ keeps in his house. Ghosface is referred to as "Ghosface Killah," a name he dropped prior to Pretty Toney, seemingly only to exoticize the MC. Then SFJ makes two quick mentions--the old-fashioned microphone and Old Blue Eyes--to further relax his anxious New Yorker reader. I can't think of a less informative comparison than Ghostface's manic, melodramatic New York chatter and Sinatra's controlled phrasing.

So maybe I'm reading too much into it? Check out the last paragraph:

...[he] began talking about how his parents had conceived him while
listening to this kind of soul music. Then he told the d.j. to stop the music.
"For those that don't have no soul, y'all wouldn't really understand or know
where the fuck I'm coming from when I play shit like that," he said. "See, I was
born in 1970, yo. You know what, I'm a seventies man, a Taurus and shit, and I
love, like, shit like that. I'd rather write to shit like that than hip-hop any
day."

Credit SFJ with putting one of Ghost's bizarre rambles in his piece, but not with what he uses it to say. The implication that rappers have no "soul" and that the critic's favorite rapper would rather be a soul singer than a rapper, plays right into the so-P.C.-it's-vaguely-racist sensibilities of the white liberal readership of The New Yorker that fuels boring and obnoxiously earnest artists like Common and Talib Kweli and equally awful non-rap things like Def Poetry Jam and ugly clothes.

What I love about Ghostface is that so much of what he says is deeply paradoxical. He celebrates murder and childbirth. He is a self-professed womanizer, broken-hearted lover, and everyone else you'd find on a city block. His albums have pushed the musical bounds of hip hop. Dennis Coles is, in short, the most daring and complex MC in hip hop. SFJ's article bothers me because it makes Ghostface sound safe.

"ELMO'S WISH" AND "THESE ANIMAL MENSWE@R": EACH WORTH $0.99

Gil Mantera and Ultimate Donny: I don't know why I love you.

Earlier this week I posted a blog about the Art Brut concert and mentioned their opening act, Gil Mantera's Party Dream. Today I'm blogging a song from both bands. I recommend BUYING both of them.

Gil Mantera's Party Band "Elmo's Wish"

GMPB is a pair of brothers, Gil Mantera and Ultimate Donny, from Youngstown, Ohio that play a form of pop music that sounds like a hybrid between Andrew W.K. and M83. The band hasn't ever released a single, but they do have a video for "Elmo's Wish" and I think it's the best thing on their new album, Bloodsongs. The song opens with an unsettling minor-key synthesizer loop that then repeats throughout the song. The beat kicks in and Ultimate Donny belts out a less-than-meets-the-eye verse tinged with existential anxiety. Gil Mantera sings the lilting, rushed chorus through a vocoder: "I don't know why I love you!" This is a thoroughly post-modern affair: the music treads familiar 80's sounds but tweaks them to make you feel uncomfortable and unsure. Ultimate Donny's lyrics utilize cliches then subvert their meaning by turning to nonsense. My favorite moment, sung with Steve Perry's desperation: She walked in through the front door/Without a clue what she's there for/She walked out with a shotgun/Wrong decision/Let's hope she made the right one.

Art Brut "These Animal Menswe@r"

This track has been around for a while and is now officially released on the Modern Art/My Little Brother EP. The song opens right into the story of a beleaguered boy whose presence elicits hatred and violence in his peers, and Argos gives it a supremely warm and cheerful delivery. By the time you get to the chorus and the ooh-wah-ooh back-up singers, it's clear that this is a different kind of Art Brut track (re: melodic, but not too much, maybe that's not new but it sure sounds like it). "These Animal Menswe@ar" has been stuck in my head for weeks now.

MY 10 FAVORITE SINGLES OF 2005

Yeah.




Here's what I love most about 2005's 10 best singles:

10. Clipse "Zen" AND "What's Up"
Two diamond jump-ropes/my neck do the double-dutch
AND
Copped the sorbet/Straight from Jorge/Jack-of-all-trades/Even mastered the gourmet/
Plus, the price got the street tongue-in-cheek/Cook it till it's al dente/Mwah, magnifique!


9. Love Is All "Felt Tip"
When the drums and saxophone take off together
AND
Josephine Olausson's voice simultaneously gets super dreamy.


8. Animal Collective "Grass"
You're stomping happily along in a pastoral dream
AND
suddenly you're in Psycho.


7. Madonna "Hung Up"
When the strings swoop in at the beginning
AND
the beat kicks into the chorus again, again, again.


6. Missy Elliot "Lose Control"
That crazy ascending loop (duh) that sounds like a speakerphone test-pattern
AND
when the beat drops out and Fat Man Scoop(?!) carries it acapella.


5. Juelz Santana and Lil' Wayne "Pick It Up"
Understand me, family/I keep cannon near me/You do not want to dare me/Hear me?
AND
the train whistle.


4. Art Brut "Good Weekend"
The drums, then the guitar
AND
BRAND NEW GIRLFRIEND.


3. Cat Power "The Greatest"
The strings and guitar sigh perfection
AND
Chan Marshall weaves her voice through the swoon.


2. Lil' Wayne "Fireman"
Quick Draw McGraw/I went to art school
AND
when the Birdman Jr. bounces contentedly through his second verse
AND
the endless ad-lib coda.


1. Young Jeezy "Go Crazy" NOT featuring Jay-z
The woozy horns to start
AND
Cannon, cannon
AND
the drum roll beat
AND
every ad-lib
AND
every punchline
AND
Sweet Jeezys, this song is perfect.

MY 5 FAVORITE ALBUMS OF 2005

Mike Myers didn't win a Grammy either.

5. Young Jeezy Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101

The signature sound of 2005 had to be Young Jeezy's YEAAAHHHs and UNHHHs. But there's a lot to like about Let's Get It beyond the adlibs. Jeezy is charismatic, yes, he delivers punchlines methodically, yes, and Let's Get It is the quintessential coke-rap album, yes, but the music is exciting in its own right. The album's various producers mirror the fast/slow tension of Snowman's verses by filling their tracks with rapid synthesizer chirps and deep, patient thumps. When the horns blow deliberately like on the album's two classic cuts, "Standing Ovation" and "Go Crazy," it's a wrap.

4. Beanie Sigel The B.Coming

The B.Coming is the sound of conscience rap; fuck Common. While all the trap-hoppers were slanging,murdering and womanizing, BeSi was locked in a cell and so his prospective is a little different. Beans is a bad man (he does his dirt) but he isn't happy about it (pain weighs heavy on his heart, it hurt). I'm not sure, but I think this is the bleakest hip hop album of all time. This is Nebraska, this is the Delta blues. Beanie Sigel is out of jail, he just doesn't sound like it.

3. Art Brut Bang Bang Rock & Roll

I think Art Brut annoys everyone at first. Then the drums and guitars get you. Then you're laughing/shouting BRAND NEW GIRLFRIEND. This album is a perfect example of a band finding a formula (loud, clean drums+loud, clean guitars+ridiulously prosaic verses+huge sing/shout-along choruses) and sticking with it. For almost any other rock band this might be too much of the same thing, but Art Brut is one of the few rock bands who are musically vibrant enough to compete with hip-hop these days. In other words: Art Brut! Top of the Pops!


2. Lil' Wayne Tha Carter II

I didn't believe it. Greatest rapper alive? Get out of here. But Weezy F. (the F stands for FEMA) Baby changed my mind and the evidence is right here. On track after track after track, Lil' Wayne spits pure fire. Everyone talks about how Wayne's grown into his cackle and how his voice adds depth to everything he says. I think he sounds silly and I like it. On the J.R. Writer mixtape track "Pick It Up," Weezy raps, "I've got a cocky-ass walk/I bounce and I bop" and he could just as easily be describing his gleeful flow. On Tha Carter II, his voice skips from high to low in a pleasant sing-song way that adds a tension to his frequently nasty rhymes. This is the South's Blueprint: throw any beat at Lil' Wayne and he'll kill it.


1. Kanye West Late Registration

What did you expect? Kanye just has too much more to say and too many more ways to say it. Plus it all holds together. "Crack Music" sits comfortably next to "Roses." The production is on point through out the album (although the hottest beat comes, ironically, from Just Blaze) and enough with the complaining about Kanye's flow: he stays on beat the entire record and offers up the right details to make his tales come to life. On "Drive Slow," my favorite track, Kanye absolutely kills it with the specifics of his memories, like his boy Mali, who had an Al B. Sure do, walking through the mall with his detachable stereo face in his hand. Late Registration isn't perfect--there's one awful track ("Bring Me Down") and a few more that don't live up to Kanye's absurdly high standards--but who else out there can talk to us about trapping, the buffet at KFC and the healthcare system AND make it sound this good?